(Note: see Gerald Warner column posted in this entry in which he discovers the solution to global warming: abolish man.)

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the German government’s climate protection adviser, sounds like a real fun guy, as only the Germans can be. He is interviewed by Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Schellnhuber, the goal that is to be set at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December for global warming is to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. How can this goal be reached?

Schellnhuber: Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) has conducted an audit to determine which countries should be allowed to emit how much carbon dioxide in order to remain within the two degree limit. The findings are sobering.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why?

Schellnhuber: Because the industrialized nations have already exceeded their quotas if you take into account past emissions. To have a two-in-three chance of reaching that target, we can only emit 750 billion tons between now and 2050. For a three-in-four chance, we can only emit 660 billion tons. If you divide these emissions per person and compare them with the current output you see that Germany, the US and other industrialized nations have either already used up their permissible quota, or will do so within the next few years….

Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) has conducted an audit to determine which countries should be allowed to emit how much carbon dioxide in order to remain within the two degree limit. The findings are sobering.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why did you base your calculations on an equal division of the total permissible quantity of CO2 among the world’s total population when each country is different from the next?

Schellnhuber: Our basic principle is that all humans have equal rights to the atmosphere. This is a basic right. This is also what German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided at a meeting in 2007. Why should a German be allowed to emit more CO2 into the atmosphere than someone from Bangladesh? No, we must divide the quota equally and fairly among all nations. [cont.]

Let’s see. Is it just a coincidence that this urgent plan to save the planet just happens to require the shutting down of industrial activity in all the advanced industrial countries? I mean, why don’t these leftists just come and out and say: “Let’s all commit suicide”? A sort of global, or at least pan-Western, Jonestown? That’s what they really want, after all. All their policies, from redistribution of wealth to sexual freedom to immigration to multiculturalism to climate change, are aimed at Western suicide. So why not just skip these complicated preliminaries and cut to the chase? Schellnhuber and his fellow European climate advisers should issue a statement saying:

The European Advisory Council on Global Change has conducted an audit to determine which people should be allowed to continue breathing oxygen in order for life to remain sustainable on the planet. The findings are sobering. The Western nations have already exceeded their exygen quotas if you take into account past breaths. Our basic principle is that all humans have equal rights to the atmosphere. The survival of humankind on terms of equality therefore requires that all Western peoples cease to breath oxygen within two years.

- end of initial entry -

A. Zarkov writes:

Yikes. You are on the ball. I was going to send you the Der Spiegel article this morning having read about it on The Reference Frame. Lubos Motl is one of the very few right wing theoretical physicists. Actually I know of no others. VFR readers should read the Feynman piece that Motl provides. Feynman wrote:

I started to say that the idea of distributing everything evenly is based on a theory that there’s only X amount of stuff in the world, that somehow we took it away from the poorer countries in the first place, and therefore we should give it back to them. But this theory doesn’t take into account the real reason for the differences between countries—that is, the development of new techniques for growing food, the development of machinery to grow food and to do other things, and the fact that all this machinery requires the concentration of capital. It isn’t the stuff, but the power to make the stuff, that is important. But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time.

That’s a taste. I recommend reading the rest. Sane and intelligent men once walked on earth. Why are so few left.

A. Zarkov continues:

Let’s not forget to note the following key paragraph from the Der Spiegel interview:

“Yes. Up to €100 billion ($142 billion) annually. If the richest sixth of the world’s population were to pay this amount, each person would have to pay €100 per year. The West would give back part of the wealth it has taken from the South in the past centuries and be indebted to countries that are now amongst the poorest in the world. It would, however, have to be ensured that the poorer nations use the money for the proposes it is intended—namely to help them to develop a greener economy.”

A appeal to white guilt. Schellnhuber tells us that white people “stole” wealth from the poor countries in the Southern Hemisphere, and now they have to give it back. But who provided the advances to the South that increased their life span? The rich white countries in the North—especially the U.S. For example one American working at one U.S. company, Maurice Hilleman, developed over three dozen vaccines. Of the 14 most administered vaccines, he invented nine of them! He is frequently credited with saving more lives than any other scientist of the 20th century. You can be sure that many people in the Third World would not be alive if not for this one American. These countries would have small populations and therefore a small claim to a carbon credit. Then we have the Green Revolution. Without the Green Revolution, a lot of the Third World would have starved to death. And who gave them that technology—white people of course? The North did not make the South poor. It was already poor living in the stone age in many cases. Schellnhuber is either insane or compromised. The liberals seems to get more and more crazy every day. When will this madness stop?

LA replies:

What’s this loonybin doing in the “conservative” (ha ha) government of Angela Merkel?

September 9

D. from Seattle writes:

Those alarmists are so ridiculous, one hardly knows where to start. Steve Sailer has a good name for them—he calls them “innumerate,” a math/numerical equivalent of illiterate.

According to this Investor’s Business Daily editorial (there’s also a nice graph there, with the source listed), greenhouse gases represent two percent of the atmosphere. Of those greenhouse gases, only 3.62 percent are CO2, and of all that CO2, only 3.4 percent is caused by human activity.

Therefore CO2 caused by human activity is a bit over one tenth of one percent of all greenhouse gases.

And that’s not even taking into account that not all greenhouse gases contribute equally to the heating of the atmosphere; water vapor contributs the most, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas), and I haven’t seen anyone wanting to reduce that.

Point being, all this activity and resources are (supposedly) going to be spent to affect one tenth of one percent of something, anything? If that’s not cluelessly evil and insane, I don’t know what is.

LA replies:

“Therefore CO2 caused by human activity is a bit over one tenth of one percent of all greenhouse gases.”

Or why not put it this way?

“Therefore CO2 caused by human activity is a bit over one five-hundredth of one percent of the atmosphere, or one fifty-thousandth of the atmosphere.”

Ben W. writes:

LA wrote: “Therefore CO2 caused by human activity is a bit over one five-hundredth of one percent of the atmosphere, or one fifty-thousandth of the atmosphere.”

But the atmosphere is really big so a fraction of that is also really big.

D. in Seattle replies to LA:

I thought about putting it that way, but then I’m not sure (and I don’t think most people are either) how much of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is too much. That’s why I said, of all greenhouse gases that are there anyway, human-caused CO2 is 0.1 percent. I thought it would be easier to people to relate to that.

Sometimes the answer to an alarming problem is right under your nose, but you do not see it until some select group of geniuses points it out. That is the case with the brain-wave report that has just come out of the London School of Economics on the subject of contraception and global warming (these are a few of your favourite things, if you are a New Labour, Guardian-reading progressive with serious ecological concerns and an enduring trust in the BBC).

The title says it all: Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, arguing that fewer births will mean fewer planet polluters. I understand the term “emissions” refers to the generation of CO2, though the context might make it sound a trifle ambiguous. The bottom line, in accountancy terms, is that every £4 spent on family planning would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton, whereas £19 would have to be spent on low-carbon technology to reach the same result.

The UN claims that 40 per cent of all pregnancies globally are unplanned. Eliminating those would prevent 34 billion tonnes of CO2 being generated. All well and good; but will that impress those who are totally dedicated to ending “man-made” climate change? Why not save 80 billion tonnes by ending pregnancy completely? There is one sure way to prevent man-made global warming and that is to abolish man. It must be a very tempting option for those at the UN and its parasite agencies who would prefer to see the planet reserved exclusively for the natterjack toad, the smallpox virus and other engaging creatures.

Having generated highly profitable mass hysteria and sidelined honest scientists who point out that the Arctic ice-cap is growing, not shrinking; that the polar bear population is increasing, not dwindling; and that the total human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is miniscule, making adjustments in its size irrelevant, the warming fanatics are learning the joys of coercion. Already the population is damaging its eyesight with “green” electric light bulbs and at least one American fanatic is proposing Nuremberg-style trials for “climate change deniers”. Why not a Chinese-style One Child Policy for the world?

That would prepare the way eventually for a Zero Child Policy which, within a century, would render harmless all our concerns about global warming. Its greatest virtue would be that, by the time the global warming Grande Peur was finally exposed for the rubbish it is, there would be nobody on earth to reproach its fabricators. You know it makes sense.